Numbers 13:1-2,30, 32-33 The Lord now said to Moses, “Send
out men to explore the land of Canaan, the land I am giving to the Israelites.
Send one leader from each of the twelve ancestral tribes.”
But Caleb tried to quiet the people as they stood before
Moses. “Let’s go at once to take the land,” he said. “We can certainly conquer
it!”
So they spread this bad report about the land among the
Israelites: “The land we traveled through and explored will devour anyone who
goes to live there. All the people we saw were huge. We even saw giants there,
the descendants of Anak. Next to them we felt like grasshoppers, and that’s
what they thought, too!”
God had already delivered the Israelites with amazing
miracles. They had witnessed his
sustaining power as they traveled through the wilderness. He had provided food, water, meat, and hello,
their clothes never wore out. He had even given their army the power to defeat
enemy armies along the way. Wow! How quickly they forgot.
Now they are ready to enter the land God has promised to
give them and they choose to focus on their own insecurities rather than God’s
power.
Today we struggle with Grasshopper Syndrome too. We struggle with our Focus, Faith, and Finishing.
1. Focus
The spies went into the land to check it out. They were to look at the cities, the “fruit”
(soil, trees, crops), and the people.
Numbers 13:18-20 See what the land is like, and find out
whether the people living there are strong or weak, few or many. See what kind
of land they live in. Is it good or bad? Do their towns have walls, or are they
unprotected like open camps? Is the soil fertile or poor? Are there many trees?
Do your best to bring back samples of the crops you see. (It happened to be the
season for harvesting the first ripe grapes.)
As they traveled through the land they found fertile soil, it
was a bountiful country—a land flowing with milk and honey. They brought back a cluster of grapes so
large that they attached it to a pole and it took two men to carry it. They returned with samples of pomegranates and
figs as well.
When the spies returned to the camp, they showed the people
the produce they had brought back. They
told them how fertile and fruitful the land was, however, they then began to
whine about the cities and the people they found there. Ten of the twelve spies complained that the
people were giants and that defeat was the only outcome of attacking.
Joshua and Caleb, on the other hand, encouraged the people
to go in at once to take the land. They
believed the Lord’s promise to give the land to the Israelites.
While the ten focused on the giants, Joshua and Caleb
focused on the Lord’s promise and on his record of faithfulness to his
people. We like the Joshua and Caleb,
must focus on the promises of the Lord.
He is not going to ruin his perfect record by failing us.
2. Faith
When giants arise in our path running to God is not always
our first thought. The enemy tries to
get us to worry and fear right away. He
reminds us of our weakness and our insignificance. He points out our past failures. He makes the giant seem larger than it really
is.
Often we feel like we have no faith at all. However, the Word tells us that we all have
faith. Romans 12:3 (NIV) “For by the
grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly
than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance
with the faith God has distributed to each of you.”
Our struggle is not lack of faith it is small,
underdeveloped faith. We struggle in our
faith when we don’t take the opportunities for it to grow. Each trial or temptation is an opportunity
for our faith to grow. When we fight against
the trials rather than embracing them and learning through them we fail to
allow our faith to grow.
The Word tells us that all we need is faith the size of a
mustard seed; however, if our faith stays that small we will struggle to
believe God’s promises. Just like a mustard seed can grow into the largest
garden plant, our faith can grow large and strong.
The Israelites had been through enough giants to have huge
faith, however, only two of the spies actually demonstrated faith.
Hebrews 11:1 “Faith is the confidence that what we hope for
will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.” If we can see that answer no faith is
required. “Seeing” is not believing
because when we see believing is unnecessary.
We must hold on and believe when there is no evidence that things will
end well. We must exercise our faith
when it looks like our ship will sink for sure.
3. Finishing
We often struggle to finish the fight and kill the giant. Many times we get a little relief and instead
of pressing through and totally annihilating the enemy in that area of our
life, we sit back and enjoy our little bit of freedom. The problem with that is that the giant will
again raise its ugly head and cause us even greater struggles in the future.
At 85 Caleb was ready to finish what he had started on his
mission to spy out the land. He had the
faith to go in and kill the giants that stood between him and the promise that
God had given him.
Joshua 14:12 “So give me the hill country that the Lord
promised me. You will remember that as scouts we found the descendants of Anak
living there in great, walled towns. But if the Lord is with me, I will drive
them out of the land, just as the Lord said.”
The descendants of Anak were giants. Caleb was not intimidated by their size or
strength, his finishing faith was in the God who had parted the Red Sea, the God
who had drowned the entire Egyptian army, the God who had fed and clothed His
people for 40+ years, the God who had given strength to the Israelite army as
they battled larger, stronger, better
trained armies along the journey.
We know from reading accounts of the Israelites entering the
Promised Land that many tribes did not obey the Lord’s command to completely destroy
the inhabitants of the land (i.e. Judges 1:29 “The tribe of Ephraim failed to
drive out the Canaanites living in Gezer, so the Canaanites continued to live
there among them.”) and that in later years after the death of Joshua the other
nations led the Israelites into idolatry which cost them their freedom and even
their lives.
We must fight our giants to the death. We cannot allow anything to live and grow in
our life that has the potential to destroy us.
Praise God! We are not fighting
alone. It is not in our strength that
the battle is won. Zechariah 4:6 Then he
said to me, “This is what the Lord says to Zerubbabel: It is not by force nor
by strength, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.”
In conclusion, we need to overcome Grasshopper Syndrome by:
1. Placing our Focus
on Christ not the giants.
2. Exercising the Faith
God has given us and allowing it to grow.
3. Finishing off
the giants as they rear their ugly heads.
All Scripture is NLT unless otherwise stated.
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